


Another Red Letter Day

by glorious_spoon



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: (by implication), Banter, Bisexual Character, Coming Out, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 21:44:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13326978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: It’s just past noon on a gloomy Saturday when Dustin climbs up the four flights of stairs to knock on the door to Steve’s apartment.Or: Dustin unexpectedly finds out a few things about Steve. Friendship fic, set a few years post-canon.





	Another Red Letter Day

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Friends Will Be Friends', by Queen.

It’s just past noon on a gloomy Saturday when Dustin climbs up the four flights of stairs to knock on the door to Steve’s apartment. He’s never really gotten why Steve lives here, given that his parents own a literal mansion with like, a literal _heated pool_ , and it’s not like they’re ever around to give him a hard time anyway. And the apartment is a total dump. Four rickety flights of stairs and no fire escape, which— hello, safety hazard, especially given the condition of the rest of the building. It would be pretty ridiculous for Steve to survive everything the Upside-Down could throw at him just to die horribly in an apartment fire because his slum-lord landlord can’t be bothered to maintain the place properly, which Dustin has told him repeatedly, to no avail.

Anyway.

It takes about five minutes of pounding on the door before Steve finally answers, shirtless and obviously hungover, looking unfairly like an underwear model even in ratty sweats and bedhead. Dustin’s mom keeps promising him that he’ll shoot right up like a weed any day now, but at sixteen, he’s pretty much given up hope. He’s resigned to being short and soft and dorky-looking and relying on his winning personality to attract girls; meanwhile, Steve has a goddamn six-pack. It’s so unfair.

Steve blinks down at him for several moments. “Dude. Dustin, now is not a great time.”

“Why, do you have a girl over?” Dustin asks, and shoves past him into the apartment. No girls in sight, although the bedroom door is closed, so hey, who knows. Steve could have like three girls in there; Dustin wouldn’t put it past him. “I so don’t care, Steve, this is important.”

“Important how?” Steve asks warily, following him into the apartment. He grabs a t-shirt off of the arm of the couch and yanks it over his head. “Important like, monsters from another dimension or important like, you need girl advice?”

“That is so totally cynical and uncalled for.”

“So is barging into my place at—” Steve squints at the clock on the microwave. “Shit. Is it really 12:30?”

“Yes, Steve, it’s really 12:30. Can we focus here, please?”

Steve glances at the bedroom door, bites his lip, obviously making some rapid calculations about the fastest way to get Dustin out of here. Yeah, he’s totally got a girl in there. “Okay, look, let me get some pants on, and—”

Before he can finish the sentence, the bedroom door swings open slightly and a bleary, sleep-clogged voice calls, “Steve?”

Oh. That’s— that’s not a girl. That voice did not belong to a girl, and the tousled, half-naked person emerging from Steve’s bedroom is _definitely_ not a girl.

“Shit,” Steve breathes, closing his eyes. For just a moment, there’s a flash of what looks like genuine fear on his face. Something about that look lodges like a stone in Dustin’s stomach. Steve never looks scared like that, not even when he’s facing down some genuinely scary shit.

The guy is scrubbing a hand through his dark hair. “Steve, please tell me you remembered to buy coffee this…” His voice trails off as he catches sight of Dustin. “Oh. Um.”

“...hi,” Dustin manages, and gives a stupid little wave.

“Shit,” Steve says again, “my fucking life.” He scrubs a hand through his hair, rallying visibly. “Dustin, Andrew. Andy, this is Dustin. Who was just about to be _leaving_ , right?”

“Like hell,” Dustin says. He feels like his brain is being forcibly rearranged, but fortunately his mouth has always been able to run on autopilot and there are in fact bigger issues at stake here than Steve’s love life. “Andrew, nice to meet you, Steve, I like, legitimately do actually need to talk to you and it really is important, _please._ ”

Steve stares at him for a long moment, then sighs. “Okay. Fine. Can you just— wait outside for a minute?”

“God damn it, Steve—”

“I will be out _in a minute,_ ” Steve says, and then his hand is on Dustin’s shoulder, forcibly propelling him out of the apartment. “Wait outside.”

The door slams shut with ominous finality. Dustin shifts his weight on the landing, looking down at the peeling linoleum floor tiles and trying not to listen to the sound of low voices arguing on the other side of the door.

It seems like a long time later, although it’s probably more like five minutes, when Steve finally emerges, dressed and combed and wearing his Ray-Bans and a scowl. He kicks the door shut behind him. “This better be fucking important, shithead.”

“You still have the bat in your trunk, right?” Dustin asks.

“Shit,” Steve says, after a moment. “Yeah. Let’s go. You can tell me all about it on the way.”

He starts down the stairs without another word, and after a moment, Dustin follows.

* * *

“So,” he says, several hours later, as they’re standing by what’s left of Cheryl DeLancy’s trailer a few miles south of Hawkins and watching the _thing_ that crawled out of her kitchen sink and ate her dog burn to a pile of greasy cinders. “Andrew, huh?”

Steve glances down at him. He’s lost his sunglasses and his hair is a wreck. The nail bat is still resting against his shoulder, dripping greenish gore all down the back of his denim jacket. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and finally says, “Don’t fucking start, man.”

“Hey, I’m not—” Dustin holds his hands up. “I mean, I’m just saying, I guess it makes sense that all of your advice on girls sucks so much.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve asks. “I give great advice.”

“Uh, bullshit.”

“Trust me, dipshit, the problem’s not the advice, it’s the implementation,” Steve says, but some of the tenseness has gone out of his face. Good. Dustin is kind of shit at this kind of heart-to-heart even with people who aren’t prickly defensive assholes like Steve. If it were anybody in the Party, he’d give them a hug and tell them that it doesn’t matter to him, that he’ll totally kick anybody’s ass if they try to start shit about it.

But this is Steve, and he’s an adult, at least technically. Dustin loves him like the big brother he’s never had, but he’s not exactly someone you can be gentle with.

“Oh, yeah. Sure it is. But, I mean, if you’re gay it totally makes sense—”

“Keep your voice down,” Steve hisses, glancing over to where Hopper and Mrs. Byers— mostly Mrs. Byers— are comforting a weeping Mrs. DeLancy, who is huddled in a lawn chair on her scorched front step. Poor lady. They really need to come up with, like, a fund or something. Hawkins Monster Disaster Relief. Point is, Dustin’s pretty sure that nobody’s paying any attention to the two of them right now, but Steve looks like he just took out a megaphone in the middle of a pep rally. “And I’m not gay.”

Dustin stares at him. “Seriously?” he asks, before he can think better of it. “Do you actually think I’m an idiot?”

“I didn’t, actually, but I’m starting to wonder.” Steve glances over at the others again and lowers his voice. “I like girls too, okay? I’m not gay.”

“But you and Andrew _are_ …”

“Henderson, if you value your life, don’t finish that sentence.”

“I was just going to say, ‘dating’,” Dustin says, aggrieved, although he totally wasn’t. Not that he actually wants to think about Steve’s sex life in any detail, no matter _who_ it involves, but half-naked people in your bedroom is a step or two beyond dating, he’s pretty sure.

“Dating,” Steve says, after a minute. “Sure, I guess you could call it that. Is that going to be a problem?”

“What? No!” Steve can’t seriously have been worried about this, can he? Of course he can. Dumbass. “Seriously, Steve, I don’t give a shit who you sleep with. Jesus.”

“Thanks a lot, asshole,” Steve says, but he’s smiling a little as he reaches out to ruffle Dustin’s hair, and Dustin suffers his hair to be ruffled even though Steve still has monster slime on his hands. They both need a shower anyway.

“Does anybody else know?”

“Nancy does. Jonathan, too.”

“Your parents?”

“Why do you think I don’t live there anymore?” Steve asks. It’s clearly meant to be light, but there’s an edge to his voice that makes Dustin wince. “Yeah, they know.”

“Assholes,” he says, with great sincerity.

Steve snorts. “It’s okay. We weren’t that close anyway.”

“Still,” Dustin says, because he’s pretty sure that’s not how this works. His mom drives him up a wall sometimes, but if she acted like that, _okay_ is not the word he’d use to describe it. “Fuck them. Just— fuck them totally.”

Steve laughs a little at that. And, okay. Fuck it. He hooks an arm around Steve’s shoulders and pulls him— monster slime, nail bat, and all— into a tight hug. Steve can shove him off if it offends his macho sensibilities too much, but he is _getting_ the hug he clearly needs right now.

Steve doesn’t shove him off. He loops his free arm around Dustin’s shoulders and squeezes back, resting his chin on the top of Dustin’s head, because he’s an asshole and also tall enough to do that.

“Thanks, man,” he says eventually.

“Hey,” Dustin says, releasing him. “Anytime.”


End file.
